Data Charmer Rogier van der Geer promoted in particle physics

On September 1st 2015, our very own Rogier successfully defended his thesis
titled "Searches for new physics through single top". We at GoDataDriven congratulate him with
this great achievement. With this addition, the team now totals no less than six PhD's!

Atlas and the Large Hadron Collider (CERN)

Rogier's research focused on the analysis of data recorded by the Atlas experiment, the largest of
the particle detectors of the Large Hadron Collider.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a 27 km long circular particle accelerator buried 100 meters
under the franco-swiss border near Geneva, Switzerland and smashes protons into each other at almost
the speed of light.

Since the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, the Standard Model of particle physics, which
describes all elementary particles and their interactions, is complete. Nevertheless it still has
some shortcomings: it fails to explain the existence of dark matter and the matter/anti-matter
asymmetry in the universe. Therefore there has to be more: "new physics" or physics beyond the
Standard Model.

Dark matter

In the roughly 1 billion collisions created by the LHC each second Rogier searched for the rare
collisions in which only a top quark is produced. In these processes, Rogier searched for deviations
from the Standard Model which could provide hints on why our universe contains primarily matter and
hardly any anti-matter. In his thesis he searched for
CP-violating processes involving a bottom
quark: both directly and indirectly through the creation of a single top quark (usually processes
generate a pair of top/anti-top quarks).

Data Charmer

While finishing his thesis, Rogier joined GoDataDriven as Data Charmer. In this role, Rogier applies
his academic background to the business-related problems of GoDataDriven's clients. Recent projects
include the optimization of a popularity prediction model for mobile apps and a predictive supply
chain management model for a large, fresh food production company.

Rob Dielemans, Managing Director of GoDataDriven says; "The nature of our projects requires our
Data Scientists to make sense out of enormous amounts of data. A PhD contributes a lot to being
successful as a Data Scientist. Besides intelligence, obtaining a Phd requires a lot of perseverance
and hard work. Rogier has truly earned this title and we are convinced of the bright future that
lies ahead of him."